Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister from 2004 to 2014, passed away on 26 December 2024 in New Delhi, aged 92. Born in Gah, a small village in what is today Pakistan’s Punjab province, his family migrated to a newly independent India in 1947. Using what he described in his 2014 farewell address as “diligence as [his] tool” in rising from a modest background, he was buoyed by a “system of scholarships”, studying economics at Cambridge and obtaining his doctorate at Oxford, where his thesis was an early critique of India’s inwardly oriented trade policy.
Following stints at Panjab University in Chandigarh and UNCTAD in New York, Singh became a professor at the Delhi School of Economics before being tapped for government service as an economic advisor in the foreign trade ministry. This was the start of a soaring career in the bureaucracy which saw him hold almost every top job in India’s economic civil service, including chief economic advisor, secretary in the finance ministry, central bank governor, and planning commission head.
During a three-year interval in Geneva as secretary-general of the South Commission, where he worked closely with Tanzanian independence leader Julius Nyerere, Singh articulated a mix of realism and idealism in its 1990 report, arguing that “politics in the management of development cannot be wished away … It must be an instrument for purposeful social change rather than a ticket to power and privilege or another lucrative profession”. Incidentally, this would characterise the next phase of his public life. He returned to India as economic affairs advisor to prime minister Chandra Shekhar.
The Indo-US nuclear deal effectively ended India’s nuclear isolation, enhancing its energy security and leading to its recognition as a legitimate nuclear state.
In 1991, a severe balance of payments crisis converged with national elections and the formation of a single party Indian National Congress government. Though a minority in parliament, it offered a more opportune set of conditions compared to the previous two years of fractious coalitions where support for reform was limited. Seeking technocratic competence, prime minister PV Narasimha Rao appointed Singh as his finance minister.
It was in these circumstances that Singh announced the first slew of sweeping economic reforms to liberalise the India economy in the 1991 union budget speech, where he used Victor Hugo’s phrase “no power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come”. The desire to avert the looming prospect of a credit default was the driving forces in creating the political moment for reform.
However, the bulk of the blueprint for liberalisation had already been developed by Singh and his colleagues over course of the 1980s, readily available for deployment during this favourable window. The reforms opened the Indian economy to the world, and included the devaluation of the rupee, removal of all import restrictions, incentives for exports, industrial delicencing, dismantling of price controls, and instituting a committee on financial markets.
Appointed to head the Congress-led coalition government eight years later, he was the first prime minister of whom I was acutely aware growing up. The sheer range of reforms he introduced, including the right to employment, information, education, food, the national rural health mission, agricultural loan waivers, and the unique identification (Aadhaar) architecture for direct transfer of public subsidies, shaped the worldview of many young Indians who went on to careers in development and public policy.
Despite a technocratic background, Singh worked constructively with activists and NGOs, which provided political contestation to fiscally conservative approaches through the National Advisory Council led by then Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Rather than viewing this structure as an encumbrance to his free rein, Singh fully engaged with it, leading to momentous social protections that augmented his competent handling of the economy, which grew at an average of around 8 per cent annually, lifting 270 million people out of multidimensional poverty. Experts have also credited Singh’s policies for largely shielding India from the 2008 global financial crisis.
Following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Singh firmed up India’s stance on foreign aid by declining external assistance and asserting its capability to domestically finance its development agenda and humanitarian response. At the same time, he spurred India’s cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. Along with Shinzo Abe, John Howard, and George W. Bush, he initiated the Quad in 2007 before Australia’s withdrawal of support in 2008, situated in the wider context of diminished backing from the United States amid its competing interests. Singh also co-founded BRICS in 2009. He staked his political reputation on achieving the 2008 Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement, leading to the Nuclear Suppliers Group waiver that enabled India to access nuclear technology and fuel from other countries.
While this nuclear drive led to the withdrawal of support from Left Front parties, he secured the votes from the Samajwadi Party to attain parliamentary approval for the deal, with India’s former President APJ Abdul Kalam, an aerospace scientist who helped develop the country’s ballistic missile capabilities, interceding on his behalf. In 2009, Singh became the first prime minister since Jawaharlal Nehru to be re-elected to a second successive full term. The Indo-US nuclear deal effectively ended India’s nuclear isolation, enhancing its energy security and leading to its recognition as a legitimate nuclear state.
As a teenager, I remember first seeing him at the graduation ceremony of IIT Kanpur where my father taught. Singh’s unassuming yet reassuring demeanour left a distinct impression which remained unchanged when I met him after he had stepped down. He brought an uncommon decency and humility to Indian public life that appear to have dissipated into a more muscular, bombastic template since his premiership. For his personal traits and lasting contributions to India’s economic reforms, development, and internationalism, Singh will be remembered.
